Yes
14% (100)

No
86% (594)

694 total votes.

Why are we having it? Because four San Diego politicians — Mayor Jerry Sanders, Council President Tony Young, Assemblyman and former mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher and state Sen. and former Councilwoman Christine Kehoe — are taking jobs in the private sector that will pay a prettier penny. All but Young are being termed out of office.

So should public service pay more, too? No.

The problem is partly one of poor timing: The economy is still awful. City workers have gone for years without across-the-board pay raises. And most of the rank and file expect to go for six more without one because of a voter-approved ballot measure.

The problem is also that the leaders’ pay is actually working out A-OK.

You need five fingers — a high five — to count all the former City Council members now in Sacramento or Washington, D.C., including San Diego’s two newest congressmen-elect, Scott Peters and Juan Vargas. Moreover, Vargas is filling a vacancy that Rep. Bob Filner left to win what may have been the most competitive San Diego mayoral race ever.

In other words, a paltry paycheck is hardly scaring off the political talent.

And is the paycheck really paltry? Hardly. Council pay exceeds San Diego’s median household income (adjusted for inflation in 2010 dollars), which is $66,652.

Of note: Household income accounts for two wage-earners when there are two in any given family. So, look closer and the figures show that 83 percent of San Diego household incomes are less than $150,000 — the equivalent of two jobs paying what the council positions do.

Still, some people insist the council work doesn’t pay enough for the personal sacrifice, responsibility and performance expectations of public office, and that more money would attract a more competitive field.

Those people are saying: What about Young? He’s quitting for a $190,000 job as CEO of the San Diego-Imperial Counties chapter of the American Red Cross!

But Young is leaving only after running for and winning three City Council elections. And now he’s just two years away from being termed out.

Besides, he took a job that wouldn’t have been offered to him in his previous life as a schoolteacher. What’s more, the names being bandied about to replace Young don’t belong to slouches. If they run, let’s see what Brian "Barry" Pollard, Bruce Williams, Dwayne Crenshaw, Myrtle Cole and Ron Lacey, bright and experienced citizens all, have to say about council pay.

It’s clear where Young stands on the issue. In a bid to raise mayor and council pay in 2008, Young said council members should “make a salary that doesn’t just attract rich people, desperate people or folks who are willing to sacrifice just about anything to get into this office.”

That proposal died, as others have since the last pay increase for elected city officials in 2003.

One argument for a pay raise is that it would augment a benefits package that once included a nice pension but now has a 401(k). Another is that elected officials earn less in San Diego than elsewhere.

Yet as far as annual average salary goes, San Diego’s council members landed right in the middle of a 2011 Pew Charitable Trust survey of 15 cities, which included the 10 largest. Such comparisons can be difficult because city council salaries, benefits, sizes and responsibilities vary widely, but for comparison’s sake, Phoenix council members earned $62,000 and San Jose’s earned $90,000. Los Angeles city council members? $179,000, by far the largest. New York’s? $122,000.

Even so, San Diego council candidates won’t take up the cause because it would be political suicide. And council members (with whom the buck does and should stop) remain leery to push for raises because it’ll eat into political capital. That leaves a smattering of journalists, city employees and policy wonks pulling for it on Twitter or at sporadic public meetings.

That month, Young’s stance had evolved. He called the issue distracting.

“We want to make sure the council stays focused on the issues that really benefit the community,” he said. “At some point, this should be addressed, but this is not the time to do it.”

When is? Well, I’m not opposed to revisiting the issue every couple years — as the salary setting commission must by city charter. But don’t expect me to change my mind until city employees and the rest of us can expect raises, too. Even then, it may not be warranted.

Government is not a get rich quick scheme. It’s not called private service.